A Literary Feast: Recreating 10 Fictional Meals in Brooklyn
“Under cover of the clinking of water goblets and silverware and bone china, I paved my plate with chicken slices. Then I covered the chicken slices with caviar thickly as if I were spreading peanut butter on a piece of bread. Then I picked up the chicken slices in my fingers one by one, rolled them so the caviar wouldn’t ooze off and ate them…Then I tackled the avocado and crabmeat salad.”
The luncheon that Esther Greenwood attends as a Mademoiselle intern takes place in 1953 and, as such, includes food, like avocado halves stuffed with crab salad and cold poached chicken, that would be hard to find on the menu of a restaurant in Brooklyn today. But you know, this is really about the spirit of things, not about following a recipe to the absolute letter, and so in the spirit of Esther Greenwood and her love for adventurous eating and unorthodox food combinations (she also loved nothing more than “to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and french dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce”), I think Lulu & Po, with its eclectic mix of small plates that all make perfect sense together, is the right place to go. Order the avocado with crème fraîche, lime, and a chili peanut picada, and don’t worry about the lack of crabmeat—Esther and the rest of the interns all suffered sever food poisoning because of it. Then, rather than what were probably watery, tasteless chicken cutlets, indulge in the crackling-skinned, iron-pressed chicken that doesn’t even need caviar spread on top of it to feel decadent and taste delicious. But if you sneak in a little jar of caviar that you picked up at Blue Apron Foods and spoon it onto each bite of chicken, well, I won’t judge you. Actually, I would straight-up applaud you. Nicely done.
Lulu & Po; 154 Carlton Avenue, Fort Greene
Blue Apron Foods; 814 Union Street, Park Slope